ADAPT #18 - Goals for 2024 (a model you can steal!)

Hey everyone!!!

Happy 2024!

Hope this year is full of novelty!
Let’s get going!

Every new year my pretty wife and I (and now also our kids) write down our goals for the year ahead.

They can be as simple as cooking more vegetarian meals, or as hard as running a marathon or writing a book, or a bit more vague as being more aware of small joys every day.

We don’t bother to make them precise or measurable or specific or balanced but we do write them down somewhere - back page of a book, on a chalkboard at home, doesn’t matter as long as they are recorded.

We don’t really look at them again throughout the year, we just write them down and let them be.

Perhaps the act of thinking and writing and discussing them is enough to subconsciously drive us towards them - almost instinctively.

We may ask WHY as we write it down, that helps with meaning.

We might discuss HOW to achieve it, but again we don’t overthink it, we just write them down.

Now just as a curiosity (I don’t want to complicate things for you), let’s talk a bit more theoretically about goals because it will guide the exercise.

Taking a few concepts from Max Tegmark (whom I’ve mentioned before in previous newsletters), goals, generally speaking, drive sub-goals that help you achieve the main goal.

Here is the model:

- [ ] Ultimate goal is what you want to achieve - what you write down without overthinking it!

- [ ] Capability enhancements are skills, tools, and knowledge you may need to acquire to achieve your goal - perhaps you don’t have all you need to be able to succeed.

- [ ] Goal retention is your ability to stick with it, focus and not get distracted.

- [ ] Better hardware and better software add up to the capabilities mentioned above - the tools, tricks, networks, knowledge, etc needed.

- [ ] Better world model is important and can become the curve ball. As you gain more knowledge and understanding of the goal you want to achieve, you may end up adjusting or changing or stopping your goal all together.
This can often be used as an excuse to quickly give up or it can become detrimental because you stick with it even though your newly acquired knowledge kinda suggests you shouldn’t have to.
So pay attention - your world model is always updating and this is why I say write them down and don’t look at them again really - just let your world model evolution evolve your goals naturally.

- [ ] Self-preservation is that - keep yourself alive/healthy otherwise you can’t achieve anything!

- [ ] Resource acquisition is the gathering of what you need to improve the hardware to enhance your capabilities to achieve the goal (eg. I bought a snorkel and mask to help me see underwater to achieve my goal of seeing an octopus in the wild!)

- [ ] Information acquisition and curiosity both help you form a better world model - pretty self-explanatory.

As always, please remember to not get too caught up in the details of models, just use them as a way to organise the complexity of life, they are not meant to be perfect.

So, set some goals for 2024!

Do it with your partner or kids or fam or even a friend.

It’s always more fun together and you can keep each other accountable ;-)

Wooo!!

Love

Gus

My recommendations:

Hey! Today I’ll use this space to promote a program I’m really excited about.

Last year we made a brief announcement for a Career Ownership Workshop and the amount of interest was overwhelming!
Thank you all for trusting me 🙏 🙏

The Career Ownership Workshop is a cohort-based program that my team and I designed for anyone who wants to take control and ownership over their career. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting, or if you are halfway through it.

Many of you were asking for more information, so my team and I decided to show instead of tell:
We will do a FREE SESSION to share some basics to get everyone started.
Afterwards, those of you who want to go deeper and have more, including a 1-1 session with me, can join the full workshop!

The Free Career Ownership Masterclass will be on Wednesday 7th of February 8.30 AM AEDT.

To sign up and receive the link, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/pU4u1D9m8fKcwr4y8

Share it with anyone you want! And please help us spread the word!

Forwarded this email? Sign up here 

Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn

LET ME HEAR IT

What do you think of this email? Tap your choice below and let me hear it 👇

🤘 MEH - NOT GREAT

🤘🤘🤘 PRETTY GOOD!

🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘 AMAZING - LOVED IT!

HIT REPLY and share your thoughts on what you want to have more in this Newsletter!